Play Life, Live Games column: ‘Battlefront 2’ live service is over

Dusty Ricketts More Content Now

Thursday

Apr 30, 2020 at 1:04 PMApr 30, 2020 at 1:04 PM

After nearly 2 ½ years, development on my favorite game of the console generation has come to an end.

On April 29, the developers at DICE released the final content update for “Star Wars Battlefront 2,” a game I’ve put hundreds of hours into since it launched in November 2017. Shortly before the update went live, it was announced that DICE was ending development of future content, but would continue to support the game through events and ongoing server maintenance.

The final update, named The Battle of Scarif Update, added the tropical planet Scarif from the end of the 2016 film “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” to the game. It also added a new costume for Darth Maul based on his appearance in the animated series “Star Wars: Rebels,” complete with his robot legs. It also added (these are slight spoilers for last year’s “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” film) Rey’s new yellow lightsaber and Emperor Palpatine’s updated look from the new film.

It was fitting that The Battle of Scarif be the last major update for the game. In 2015, a lot of the same developers released “Star Wars Battlefront,” which was a reboot of the popular Battlefront series from the mid-2000s. That game received four major content updates over the course of a year, the final one being based on “Rogue One” and added Scarif to that game.

Since it was announced that development on the game was coming to an end, people have been reaching out to the developers to thank them for their hard work over the lifetime of the game.

“Thank you so much for everything you and the team did for this game!” someone with the Twitter handle Shreevs Senate posted. “Since (the) alpha, beta and launch, I played almost nothing else. Thank you for 2,000 hours of fun and by far my favorite game of all time! I will never forget this period of my life!”

And there are dozens of other messages just like that online.

Based on social media posts, it appears most of the developers have been moved to a non-Star Wars project, most likely the next installment in the Battlefield series. “Battlefield V” came out the year after “Battlefront 2″ and has struggled ever since. In fact, it too is now ending support for new content in the coming weeks.

EA, which publishes the Battlefront and Battlefield games, has the license to release Star Wars games for another three years. I’m hoping that they’re able to release “Star Wars Battlefront 3” next year for both the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles and then be able to continue to support the game for two years after that.

Even though new content is not coming to “Battlefront 2,” it’s still going to be my go-to game to play at the end of the day for the foreseeable future (probably until the next Battlefront game gets released). The game has characters and levels based on all 11 theatrically released Star Wars films. There’s more than enough in it to keep any Star Wars fan entertained for hours.Dusty Ricketts is the editor of The Destin Log and The Walton Sun newspapers and can be reached at dricketts@thedestinlog.com.